CHASE
DAY An image site for tornado chasers, weather photographers,
sky lovers and dreamers

Monster supercell crossing south central Kansas
in June. This storm had produced three tornadoes in its life; the last one just
moments before this image was shot. For me this was an interesting outcome, my
worst bust of the year produced one of my favorite storm shots.

Supercell in east central Kansas with rotating
mesocyclone. This image was taken with my widest lens and if I don't center the
horizon I get field curvature, like
this.
Sometimes that curvature can make for fun shots. In this case showing the top
of the storm that was overhead.

This storm was part of a short line
located one cell from the east end as the cells moved NNE. Were not sure why
this cell later became the dominant storm of the day, but from early in its
life cycle it showed a rotational structure.

Forming tornado lifts dirt out of the fields
east of Grand Island, Nebraska. If you're not familiar you may not see the
tornado. Look to the top of the image to see the smooth (laminar) funnel shape
descending from the clouds. The circulation from this formation is already
producing high wind on the ground. Thus it's a officially a tornado even
through the condensation funnel is not making ground contact. Here is another
shot of the tornado as it
started, this one showing a wider area of the rotation.

Another shot of the Grand Island to Aurora,
Nebraska tornado moving across open country. Of note, the city of Aurora also
had the largest
hail to fall in the US. This was in the spring of 2003. Link may be time
sensitive.

Funnel cloud, almost tornado at the back of a
wrapping gust front. This storm did produce two confirmed tornadoes later in
the afternoon in the exact part of the structure this funnel formed. Why it
took a couple more hours to come together is not known.

Large hailstones falling in front of us, see
white spots on the image. So we stopped to evaluate our options, of which there
were none. So into the hail it would be .....again.

Canon 15mm "square format" fish-eye
lens.

Tornado across the brightly sunlit
field.....deeply imbedded tornado (center of the image in the rain) with a
column of dirt reveals itself.

Large funnel- small tornado. A well formed
funnel cloud reaches for the ground, but doesn't quite make it. Swirls of dust
were seen under this formation for about 5 minutes, but the condensation vortex
never got planted on the ground. Another shot of this
tornado later
in its life cycle.

Hailstones frozen in flight behind a supercell
thunderstorm. Supercells often dump large hail in the wake of the storm behind
the main updraft. In this case the low sun angle gave us a nice
perspective.

A splash of late night lightning and thunder with
just a little water for the thirsty cactus. Storms that move off the Mexican
Sierra often have wind and lightning, but little rain. Shot on May 25th, 2009
with the help of my daughter.

Stacked plates, or
shelf clouds
move over a farm house northeast of Marysville, KS. The storm produced two
tornadoes, one was about 20 minutes before this images was taken. We followed
this supercell for hours with the only direct path to the updraft on mud roads.
A fellow chaser and friend from Canada,
Ron Gravelle nailed the storm
dropping south toward Marysville. Coming in from the west behind the storm
there were no hard surface roads. I have a Jeep that can handle most of the
Kansas gumbo, but this day the back roads slowed us down enough to miss the
tornado.

Next year, bigger tires, deeper lugs.

Storm chaser grabs a shot of an LP supercell in
NE Kansas.

Tornado moves across open country north of Hoxie
Kansas. The tornado formed from a classic supercell, although rain wrapped
around outside of the visible mesocyclone/ wall cloud the tornado stayed highly
photogenic. Meanwhile a much larger wall cloud was formed to the north about 5
miles producing more tornadoes, some deeply imbedded in heavy ran. One of the
tornadoes moved from west to east around the outer edge of the rotating wall
cloud coming very close to hitting a column of chasers moving north.

Hoxie Tornado Slide Show Click link to
get in, then click arrow on the right to get it going. To
speed up the slide show double click the arrow and set it at a lower
number. The first image is slow but the rest are faster. To get out
click on the words HOME PAGE.

Tornadoes & Funnels- Six pages of tornadoes showing
shape, color and character. This page gets more visits than any other since I
started this site. Another page originally designed for young viewers learning
the basics.